Tom Ford, The Marquis de Sex

Six months after his nasty breakup with Gucci, the fashion house he built into a cultural juggernaut, Tom Ford has a new book and outlook. But as Michael Hainey discovers, he is still up to his old tricks.

In 1994 the Gucci fashion house was like the New York Yankees in the early '70s: a storied organization that had slid into the cellar of irrelevance. The Yankees, of course, were bought by George Steinbrenner, and Gucci turned to its resident wunderkind, a 32-year-old Texas-born designer named Tom Ford, who'd been with the company since 1990. Over the next ten years, Ford (and his business partner, Domenico De Sole) restored swagger and sex to Gucci, using a recipe of...swagger and sex. In the process, the company went from $263 million in revenues during Ford's first year as creative director to $3.2 billion by the time he left last spring after a showdown with management over creative control. Since then, Ford has been relatively silent, letting rumors swirl about his next move: Will he take over another fashion house? Direct movies? Design furniture? Questions remain, although in this interview, which took place at the Hotel Bel-Air last August, Ford came—well, clean....

What has it been like for you since you left Gucci?

It's so sad for me. I went through a really tough sort of depression, which I think is normal. It was fourteen years of my life. And I knew it was coming, too. The last six months were insane—I was trying to have this amazing show and go out in as strong a way as I could. Now I think I will take a few weeks off—but not really, because I'm going to be working. I just feel like I need a little space. [The waitress comes to take the drink order.] I shouldn't while I'm being interviewed.

I shouldn't while I'm interviewing.

I am usually quite a lush. I love drinking. But I stopped drinking for vanity reasons. I put on some pounds, and I'm getting a little puffy. Gotta lose the ten pounds I gained.

You should have a drink.

You're the Devil. I'll have a drink.

Did you drink a lot after you left Gucci?

I drank through the whole thing. Maybe I was a bad boss. I think I was a good boss. Five o'clock every day, man, it was cocktail hour. And those cocktails came out, trays of vodka tonics, and the whole staff would keep drinking till like nine, and we'd do that every day, every day. Because in a creative profession, sometimes loosening up is the best idea. Seriously.

Did you need to see a shrink after Gucci and losing your job?

I've never seen one. And I would love to. I may do that. I was always traveling so much and never had the time. The last few years, I intended to—because I needed to, because so much was going on.

My suspicion is you're surrounded by people by who always want to tell you what you want to hear.

Not at all. I wish! [laughs] God. Richard Buckley [Ford's companion of eighteen years]—I wish he'd tell me what I want to hear!

I think the fashion world in general is a little joyless.

It's like high school, too, by the way.

Could we talk about sex?

Yes, please. You go for it.

You brought sex into the mainstream.

Maybe. It's funny, I think people make more of sex and my sexuality and my views on sex than I do. I'm kind of just myself. Meaning that I've always been quite cool about sex, and comfortable talking about sex, and comfortable having sex, and comfortable with my sexuality. And comfortable with kind of anything anybody wants to do. And that's a big part of it. I think sex is one of the nice things in life. I don't know why everybody makes a big deal about it. I find violence much more offensive than sex.

How old were you when you lost your virginity?

I was 14.

What was her name?

Bari.

What do you remember?

Her tits. We were sitting in my grandmother's house on this mountain in Santa Fe, and she unbuttoned her shirt and they just spilled out. [laughs] I was 14, she was 15. But she'd been having sex since she was 13. So she just decided she was going to sleep with me, and she liked me, and that was that.

Every man should be fucked at some point in his life. You shouldn't force yourself to do it. But it's really not that different than having a massage.

I'm too repressed.

That's silly. Everyone should try it. It doesn't feel that much different. It's skin. You should do it with someone you like. Do it with a friend who you think is great. It's very easy. It's normal. You've never kissed a guy?

Only on the cheek.... People must throw themselves at you all the time.

No one throws themselves at me, ever. People are either afraid of me or know that I'm married.

You're saying no one ever propositions you or grabs your thigh?

Maybe it's just that no one I particularly like does. I can't go to bars. I mean, I couldn't go out to a homo club even if I wanted to. The fact is, I've become more and more a sex symbol, but it's like it's been less and less sex.

Where does the image of Tom Ford separate from the reality of Tom Ford? Is what I see what I get?

You don't believe me?

You seem entirely fabricated. I think it's all artifice with you. Like, I wonder what is the true Tom Ford. I wonder if even you know who it is, or remember.

There are many things in me that are real and true to who I am, who I always have been. I'm sweet. [laughs] I'm romantic. I like to be silly. I'm very silly.

If I had five words to describe Tom Ford, silly wouldn't be one.

Oh, I like to just have fun and be silly and say pretty much whatever comes into my mind, do pretty much whatever I want. Maybe my image is different, because I am very controlling in my image. I mean, you'll never see a picture of me necessarily being silly, but...

I think you're a control freak.

In terms of my image, absolutely I'm a control freak. For instance, I'm not as tall as people think.

No, you're not.

I wear high heels. [laughs] Like these that I have on. They're stupid; I need to get rid of them. But I did these like two or three seasons ago, and I started wearing them, and then every time I change into another pair of shoes, I feel sort of less strong.

Do you have a butler?

Yes.

Does he lay your clothes out for you?

He doesn't do that. Because I like to choose at the last minute when I'm getting dressed. Having a butler's a nice thing, if you can afford it. When I come home in the evening, he's turned all the lights on to exactly the level of dimness that I like. Lights the fires, lights the candles, puts on the stereo, draws my bath.

You take a bath?

I take three baths a day. I don't ever take a shower.

Why?

Why do anything standing up when it's something that you can do lying down?

Okay, Diana Vreeland. You're a long way from Texas.

Oh, I don't know. There are people like that in Texas.

But is there ever a moment when you sit there and think, I can't fucking believe where I am and where I came from?

All the time. I am so lucky. But on the other hand, I have the life that as a kid I wanted.

You knew you wanted this life as a kid?

Yeah, I created it. As you said, I'm self-invented. Everybody can do that. And I think you should.

But as a kid, you weren't fantasizing about being a designer, were you?

Oh, I so was. I wanted to live in an amazing, glamorous apartment in New York. I wanted to have a butler and have fabulous cocktail parties, and I wanted to have beautiful friends and beautiful cars and beautiful things, absolutely.

You're known for your ten-year plans. Do you have one for the next ten years?

Mm-hm. Maybe less. And I suppose this is something that only comes to people who have had a goal and were fortunate enough to reach it. There does come a certain security and confidence, and I have that. Even if I never did anything again, I will feel that I had a voice in modern culture, that I made my contribution, that I lived my dream, my life. I was super-driven at one point. I'm still driven, but maybe I don't take it as seriously as I did.

Why?

Because I feel good about what I've accomplished. It doesn't mean that's all there is, and maybe now I need to focus on a different side of my life, but I think it's all sort of a journey and you have to keep on.

What do you think your obituary's going to say?

I have no idea. And actually, I don't care. Although I did just design my mausoleum.

Really?

Yeah. Tadao Ando, the Japanese architect who built the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, is building a house for us in New Mexico. Actually we've just broken ground on the mausoleum. It's on a place where we've been camping, underneath this rock cliff. We have a pair of eagles, a nest there. When you enter the mausoleum, you go down and then come into a circular room. And there are slots in the walls, and there's room for a couple of horses and dogs.... I'm just sort of having fun with it. Because we're all going to end up dead, so why not have fun with it while you're alive? I designed my casket. It was very simple, modest, although in very expensive rosewood. And it goes into a box that is black granite. Slotted in the wall.

When did you design it?

In the last year.

Why?

Well, because we're doing this ranch and because New Mexico, for me, is home. I was just sitting there one day, and I thought, if I had to pick any place in the world, where would I want to be? This is it. So why not just make this part of the design project! I designed the house with an elevator in it, so I can live there until I die.

Actually, the reason I started doing this was my dog John died. And the ashes were in a box in my safe in Santa Fe. I loved this dog. And I liked the idea of going and sitting and sort of visiting with John. So it's a meditation space. My parents are getting up in age, too, and at some point I'll have to cope with that. Where the hell am I going to put them? I don't want to stick them in some cemetery with anybody. I want to be able to go and sort of just sit and think about how wonderful they were and how much I loved them.... You're not staying here at the hotel, are you?

Too bad we didn't do the interview at my house. My house is so seductive.

I'm sure it is.

So you've never slept with a man?

I told you, no.

I think we'd have nice sex. I don't know why guys get all flipped-out by this. There's nothing like sex with a man. Strong arms...

I like thin wrists, a long neck...

That's probably the difference between straight and gay right there. I don't want to sleep with anything with thin wrists. I want to sleep with something strong and powerful. My equal. That could be a sort of match to the death. Where we're pitted against each other. It disturbs me that their wrists are thin. It disturbs me that they're willowy. That I could hurt them, that they're fragile. It makes me behave differently with them and give them latitude that I would not give to a man.

I think I'm more comfortable with women than men, in my friendships. I mean, I'm not a guy's guy.

I am. I like the company of men. I like to go out and get drunk and talk about pussy. I'm quite sporty for a fag. I like to play tennis and swim, play golf and ski and ride, and you know, I'm sort of... I like men!

That's because you're gay!

Yeah. But a lot of gay men have only women friends. They like to fuck men, but they want to, like, talk about drapes. And I can talk about drapes, but I actually like men. I think gay men are the most masculine of all men. Because not only are you attracted to that, but you also are that. Your life is completely masculine.

Let's talk about women for a second. And what I call the skankification of the culture.

What does that mean? Define "skankification."

There's no line between sexy and slutty anymore, and you kind of erased it.

What's wrong with sluts? I remember being like 11 and seeing the series I, Claudius on Masterpiece Theatre, which we watched as a family every Sunday. And I remember Claudius's wife, Messalina, I believe, had a fuck-off with the most famous prostitute in Rome. And basically she made a fool of the whores by fucking more.... She actually outfucked whoever the most famous prostitute in Rome at the time was. And I remember thinking, Wow! If I were a woman, I would have done that. Because how great to do that. If sluttiness is what you like, what's wrong with that? Why do we think being a slut's bad? Sluttiness is just a lot of freedom.

I didn't say it's bad.

To some people, sluttiness is sexiness. For some people, sexiness is a librarian, or a schoolgirl. In pleated skirts and field-hockey pads. I happen to find hair under people's arms and hair on people's legs sexy, but then, of course, I'm a homosexual. So I don't know. In a way, we've desexed women. We've demystified them. We've stripped away their natural state. We're sort of reviled by weight—we've set an almost unattainable goal. But I'm guilty of this, I'm part of it. We've dehumanized them. They're so clean and scrubbed and polished and lacquered, and they become objects and things, or I guess they always were.

But you said you liked women with a touch of dirtiness.

I like everybody with a touch of dirty. I mean, I'm not saying I want to go between someone's legs and find flies buzzing around there.... It should be clean. But we've gotten silly about this. There's nothing worse than kissing somebody, or hugging somebody, or going under their arm and smelling deodorant and like Lifebuoy soap. The smell of a body is a great thing.

Are you afraid for what comes next? I mean, you could fail.

Yeah. It's not like people haven't had their knives out for me for the last ten years. And it's a constant. It's true, I might fail. But I'd be more upset if I didn't try anything.

What are you cursed with?

I'm cursed with the pursuit of a kind of perfection that doesn't exist and is unnatural. And it often ruins moments that should just be nice. And I'm working on it. In the fashion industry, by the nature of it, we're always living in tomorrow. Because you're not thinking what's in style now but in eighteen months. And my life is always about that: "I'm not happy today, but I'll be happy tomorrow. My house is not finished today, but it will be finished tomorrow. When it's finished tomorrow, I'm going to be happy." And then today just goes away.

Most of the year, I was at a shoe factory, or a handbag factory, or a clothing factory, working all day long. So the fashion world for me is really all this hard work. And sitting in meetings, hearing what was selling, what wasn't selling, what was working, what wasn't working, why wasn't it working, why this was working—you know, nya nya nya.... So it was really work—quite sculptural and at the same time commercial and sleuthlike, trying to figure out what was coming next. It took over my life. And the moment it's done you can't rest, because two months later a whole new bunch of stuff has to come to the stores to keep the company afloat. And so that was great fun: "What the fuck are we going to do now!" Just a constant unending thing.

I think I live too much in the past.

Who cares about the past? It's finished! Today, the future, but the past? You can live in that when you're in your eighties. I never live in the past. Other than my looks. I look at pictures all the time and I say, "I wish my eyes were still like that" and "God, I wish I still had all that hair." And "I wish my ass were still like that." God, I remember when I could flip around onto my stomach naked in front of anybody.

No, but I need to have that filled with collagen. I have Botox right here and collagen right in my brow lines. I'm going to have some collagen put in there. It's probably because this part is all Botox, and so it's dead smooth. So I need to have that fid. I noticed that the other day. Thanks for pointing it out.

I wasn't pointing it out.

That's okay. I don't mind looking 42. I just want to look like a good 42. I don't want to look younger, I don't care. But yeah, I need to have that fid.

I wouldn't.

Then I need to accentuate it more. Maybe I'll go home and get the razor and cut it. Turn the tape recorder off. You've had enough interview.

Michael Hainey is GQ's deputy editor.

*This piece was originally published in the November 2004 issue with the title "The Marquis de Sex."

Okay, now get penetrated by Tom Ford's style advice, as he teaches you how to dress like a grown man:

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